Dispatch a Game of the Year Contender, Season Review

Dispatch - Potential Game of the Year?

Story and Release

They ended up making it all the build up worth it and gave us the immediate reaction of wanting to run the game again to see the other variations in the story. Whether from a romance, team or character progression, it appears the game's choices truly mattered at every turn, as they felt during the moment.

The building hype and excitement week after week paid off in the final episodes. Part of it felt like it could have gone on for weeks longer, but the dual episode release format ended up being the right way to approach this game.

That story hits, hard, there are some tropes but it still feels fleshed out and engaging, the hero does not feel like the origin story of this worlds Iron Man but it does feel like the origin story of a Guardians/Suicide Squad-esque avengers team.

Acting, Performances and Characters

I cannot portray myself as this amazing critique of performances and art, my tastes are not all that refined and high-end. Good performances are often noted but bad performances stick out like a sore thumb. This is all said to highlight, every single actor, line, scene, portrayal, just absolutely blew me out of the park. For an animated game/show without the highest revenue hopes or budget in the world, I cannot believe how well these characters were portrayed.

Perhaps the animated portrayal helped with the ability to paint a narrative story of the characters, however, you can definitively feel the character and intent of each character. Much of this, I believe, is due to the producers selecting the right talents for the Job. Each and everyone felt authentic and although most of the characters were assholes, they were unique and identifiable assholes.

There is much to leave on the drawing board as well, every one of these characters has more to them to build upon in the future, if the producers so choose.

Gameplay and Format

The game's main mechanic the Dispatching was well used throughout and I truly enjoyed it. Without spoilers, one of my choices resulted in the majority of my team having low morale in episode 8 when everything goes up in flames (no not by Flambé, yet..). This choice earlier in the narrative part, directly impacted my game play and had me wondering the entire time, did I make the right choice.

The Dispatching mechanic itself I could play a game out of in a lengthier format. I wouldn't want this to be any different than it was but the simple game was very enjoyable and found myself wanting more, except for the fact that the story/game fit nicely together.

Their is a fairly substantial part of me that wonders if this type of format should be adopted in a more significant manner on regular streaming platforms. Not only invested in the story but actually in the results. Not many have been able to pull it off but then again, many shows have tried the normal and been cancelled all the same. Dragonball Sparking Zero had a similar idea but different gameplay premise, letting the gamer choose their own canon. One of these days a content provider is going to start regularly producing shows that have some kind of investment and ability to manipulate results by the viewer and if they get a scalable format it make a lot of money.

I do worry about continuity going forward, mainly from the aspect that I can imagine the ending results can vary significantly for certain characters. This may become too much of a web of spiders if trying for a Season 2. However, it just means more possibilities, and if they could integrate all of our choices going forward, that would be monumental.

Final Thoughts - Game of the Year Contender?

Overall, Dispatch Season 1 is an amazing video game and we give it a 9.5/10. This year is becoming truly stacked with amazing games. Some of which came out before we started this website. However, I can strongly say that Dispatch is highly likely to be in our top 5.